Friday, May 30, 2014

Someone’s gotta coin a snappy name for the genre
represented by So Solid Crew and the hordes who came in their wake.UK garage doesn’t cut it anymore, it’s
misleading.Listen to the debut from Leyton
crewMore Fire and you’ll hear hardly a
trace of house ‘n’ garage.2-step’s
swing and sensuality isbanished in
favour ofhard-bounce riddims and
punishing textures.More Fire’s primary
producers, the Platinum 45 team, draw on the most anti-pop, street vanguard
elements in black music history:electro’s angular coldness, jungle’s bruising bass blows,ragga’s lurch and twitch.

“Oi!”, More Fire’sNumber 7 smash of 2002, made for the most exhilaratingly extreme Top of
the Pops appearance in living memory. For pop punters who like a nice choon and
fans of Artful Dodger-style softcore garage alike,“Oi!” had the shock impact of punk: “is this
even music?!?”The answer, eventually,
is “yes”. But it takes several listens before what initially seems hookless
reveals itself as incredibly contagious. Platinum 45’s idea of melody seems
derived almost entirely from videogame musik and mobile ring-tones.Their dry rhythms connect backwards through
time to Schoolly D andpioneering
dancehall riddim “Sleng Teng”, and sideways across space to current rap like
The Clipse’s“Grindin” (a drum machine
on auto-pilot).If James Brown was a 19
year old from an E4 estate who’d mispent his youth in a purple haze of
Playstation and hydroponic, this might be his idea of future funk.Factor in the rapid-fire jabber of Ozzie B,
Lethal B, and Neeko,with its blend of
gruff ragga grain and uncouth Cockney, and you’ve got music that instantly
creates a massive generation gap.

Can this sound, brutally shorn of pop appeal, sustain a
whole album? If you make it past the incomparably dreary “Intro” (in which More
Fire refute the charge that they’re one-hit wonders and damn near hammer
coffin-nails in their career),you’ll
find an album that’s highly listenable. Alongside Platinum 45 stand-outs
“Smokin’” and “Politics”, two killer tracks are guest-produced by members of
Roll Deep, hot crew of the moment. Wiley’s “Lock Down” pivots around a
bubble-and-squeak bassline similar to Roll Deep’s insidious“Creeper”, while Dizzee Rascal (the
MC/producer to watch in 2003) contributes theasymmetrical anti-groove of “Still the Same”over which he spits rhymesin trademark edge-of-hysteria style.

Lyrically, no ground is broken. Haters are
castigated,ho’s get humiliated, weed (strictly
high-grade) is hymned, and “soldiers, fallen” are mourned as mawkishly as Bone
Thugs or P. Diddy.But the art ofMC-ing doesn’t really involve opening up new
areas of content, it’s about finding fresh twists on the same restricted set of
themes. What we’re witnessing with this genre-without-a-satisfactory-name that
More Fire Crew exemplify and excel at, is the final arrival--after many false
dawns--of an authentically British rap. No longer a pale copy of the American
original, different but equally potent, it’s something to celebrate.

Interview with Neeko of More Fire Crew

Q: Do you get much inspiration from American rap or are you coming
more out of the tradition of MC-ing that runs through UK garage and jungle back
to hardcore rave?

A: We've got nuff love for
hip hop and it takes up most of our listening time. But the garage vibe came
from jungle and the main bones of it come from heavy jungle influence--that's
what gives it such a British Flavor. Our favourite jungle MCs were Skibadee,
Shabba and Stevie Hyper-D.

Q: Were you aware the word "Oi!" has this dodgy
connotation, as the name of this punk/skinhead movement with a reputation for
fascist allegiances? More Fire nabbing their catchphrase almost seems like a
jab in the eye for the racist scum.

A: We didn't even know about that! That's wicked
that we can change perception on something like that, turning something totally
negative to a positive thing without even realising!

Q: The whole garage-fronted-by-MCs upsurge seems unstoppable at
the moment--so many crews coming through, so many new rhythmic ideas bubbling.
Tempos are slowing and it seems like the music is turning from UK garage into
UK rap. If so, will this sound ever break America?

A: It's anyone's guess where Garage is going
with all the madness surrounding UK urban music at the moment. It's just not
getting the support it should be. The good thing is that it's still thriving in
its own way. People are still pushing the boundaries. I think a lot of UK hip
hop will come through now, but with a totally British flavour through all the
garage influences. The MCs coming through right now have the talent where
theycan rap at 90 b.p.m. or 140 b.p.m. We'll break the US soon, but we need to
focus on cracking the UK market properly first. It's no good going over half
baked!

Friday, May 23, 2014

SUN RA - DROPPING SCIENCEIn the summer, of 1989 I interviewed Sun Ra, through the auspices of a friend at A&M, for whom Sun Ra recorded a couple of so-so LPs around the cusp of the Nineties. It took place in a hotel in mid-Manhattan. He wore the robes and there was this sort of hovering presence of acolytes in attendance throughout. Very much an aura of... if not quite majesty, then certainly being ushered into the presence of a potentate, a very special personage. "Interviewed" - more like, granted an audience. 90 minutes or thereabouts ensued of nodding my head while the great man dropped science in his soft, serene voice. It very quickly became very clear to me that any attempts on my part to steer the conversation or ask an actual, y'know, question would be both presumptuous and surplus to requirements. He just kept going.

I must have been in a hurry when it came time to transcribe and write it up, because all I have is a partial transcript, the choicest quotes, with other bits in paraphrase or shorthand. In those days, with only a few exceptions I always thriftily recycled interview tapes once they were transcribed. So Sun Ra's wit and wisdom was doubtless erased by something like the Snapdragons.

Which leads on to a further indignity: the fact that Sun Ra, Prophet-God of 20th Century Music, Ambassador for the Omniverse, etc, should end up in Sidelines, a section of Melody Maker comprised of quarter-page and third-of-page featurettes mostly about up-and-coming bands, with the occasional oldie / comeback/ reissue / twilight-of-career veteran. Doubtless with that particular issue, Sun Ra would have kept company with a runt-of-the-litter baggy bandwagon-jumper, a chill-out house chancer on Rhythm King, and perhaps a new project involving ex-members of Bomb Party and Gaye Bykers on Acid.

Below are most of the maxims, aphorisms and stories I transcribed from the "interview". For more on Sun Ra check also this Quietus 100th Birthday tribute by David Stubbs, whose copy of Disco 3000 I taped as my baptismal experience of Ra-ism when we were students, and with whom I would go see the Arkestra when they played the Fridge in Brixton in late 1985.

"The
intellectuals were the ones who pushed jazz. Where Icame from it was the schoolteachers, the
intelligentsia."

"The
intellectuals liked to have big bands to play at their social affairs. When I
was in a big band, I never used to play bars or taverns, just social
affairs."

"In the big
bands, that's where they played big sounds, so their minds were expanded.
Nowadays with these musicians who play in combos, their minds aren't as
expanded."

"Jazz is a
big band music for intellectuals, it doesn't come from the bottom - people who
like it listen for the creativity not the monotony.

"Musicians
just have the twelve notes, and they perform miracles with them. Music is a
language, but unlike the alphabet which has twenty six letters, music only has
twelve notes."

" Most trained
musicians deal with what they are being taught, the known, But I'm dealing with the
unknown - giving impressions of the unknown."

"I don't speak
about the Universe cos that's the onenessof things, I'm talking about the Omniverse, the multiplicity of things,
out in space, world after world after world"

"People trying to
make this place home when they should be thinking about being citizens of the
Omniverse, beyond the Universe - how can you get people on the street to think
like

that?"

"What I'm saying
is strange to your ears, but you should listen cos I was on this planet before
you were born - an animal in a forest would be silent and listen to the strange
sound"

"Right now freedom
would do the students and the massesno
good, forget it - they need not evolution but ever-lution.Their minds would have to advance."

"What Man is doing
to this planet is the Omniverse'sbusiness now, and they are gonna eliminate mankind when they see what we
done to it. Decline of the Indians, the Egyptians, whose five thousand empire
eradicated."

"A reverend said
that my music is world survival music. I did a very interesting interview with
him and I said some things that even shocked me"

"Time is like a skiff
- I saw that in a vision about Time. I have dreams - dream are instructive,
they're also examinations or tests about how sharp your responses
are.Every day you're being observed.
Every thought you ever hadis being
written down - and you gonna be judged by that, and

what you should have done, would have down, could have
done,oughtna have
down. You get judged by all those different dimensions.This makes life
very complexfor human beings, but all
the while they're thinking of love, or politics, and all the while they're
being judged as cosmic or cosmo-beings.

Everybody has some part of them that's the cosmos part."

"People might shut
their ears to what I'm saying, but if it's music it will go down into their
subconscious and stay there."

"Everyone asks
where you from - even in America - so I say Egypt. Wouldn't accept that I'm
from US - so I said that I'm an Ancient American - I don't know about anything
aboutAfrica so I can't call myself
Afro-American like some militants of the so-called Black America."

"Everything in
nature changes, why shouldn't I? Like flowers or clouds - there are no two
alike."

"I became aware of other
dimensions when I was 3 yearsold. I
was strange to my family and they was strange too. Same with my friends, very good friends, but I was a
stranger to them too. I was part of them, but there was another part of me they
knew nothing about, and I never discussed it.

I could see they were stopped before they started. I
wasright too. Maybe I could have helped
them, if I had discussed the other side of me."

"I can see the
destinations - like with the Chinese students [of Tianamen Square protests], I could see; they're in trouble.
And sure enough, they all got shot. They're not gonna make it, cos they don't
have the cosmos on their side, cos they're against their elders. The cosmos is
on the side of the elders. The students might be 'right', but the cosmos doesn't care about 'right'.
The elders have authority and seniority."

"The students
spend all their energy on that, but they don't have any foundation, cos they
don't have any music.When one of the
emperors banned all instruments except for the flute, that was the downfall of
China. You've got a period of vacuum in Chinese culture, and they
better get down to making some music and beauty before they go after anything
else. Cos the cosmos don't care about anybody unless they've got some culture.
If you don't, why should they be interested in you. Why should you be
interested in every grain of sand, or blade of grass, or every little ant?And that's what we are to the cosmos. They
got their own standards."

"I would say
humanity is in trouble - they being judged by some cosmos standards. And they
don't know their standards."

"My job is
probably the most neglected factor in theuniverse. I knew when I was three years old that I had to do something I
didn't want to do, tell people all about this. I didn't even want to play,
then. I dedicated my so-called life to the Creator, in that seeing that he's
seen and heard everything, I'd play something he'd never heard before.

"Here's something you've never ever experienced before. I
have to play for this Creator because other things coming from this planet he's
not pleased with - it's like static, pollution in every way, mental, physical,
that's all that goes up there.

"That's my advice
to musicians - do something that the Creator might sit up and take notice of."

"I did this to
maintain a low profile, but it didn't work. I was a great failure at
maintaining a low profile. See, the whole world wants to know what I've been doing, ten
minutes ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty years ago.

"Fifty years ago I
was singing a song "we take a trip to outer space, next stop Mars. That
was fifty years ago. So people should have listened to me.

"Hitler put his
Mein Kampf and then tried to apply. I put my book out there too, but it's in
music. But I'm going to apply it too.Interplanetary travel is now a reality. All of what I said has come
true. But that's what I was saying fifty years ago. Now I'm far in advanceI'm the top innovator on the planet, and
if I'm English American that makes me belong to England and England needs an
innovator they haven't got one."

"Born, or so they
say, in Alabama, but I say I'm from Saturn, not born there.

"I'm more of a spirit than a human being, this
is not my body. Your body belongs
to your mother and father, it's part of the reproduction system, and what's
reproduced cannot be part of Creation, it's just a facsimile. That body is not
really you. What is you is your spirit, which comes from Eternity. The way you
look you've been brainwashed to thinkof as you.Now it's
time to get acquainted with you."

"I don't really live in time, there's no yesterday and no
tomorrow it's all continuous fabric."

"I'm explaining what
I do, but I'm saying that I'vetouched
the unknown, the real Creation.You have to be
real advanced to do that, and talking about righteousness is the wrong way to
get there. The Creator told me that he doesn't regard no person as good person
or bad person. Doing good things does not make them good, and vice versa. Every
living thing is ensured, they are his children, you got the ant nation, you got
the ostrich nation, all of them following the laws."

"How could a kingdom as powerful as
Persia fall? They fell because something happened to the music. Same thing
happeningto the West - you got the
commercial forces."

"I'm in human form
and nobody inhuman form has ever done
the proper thing for solving the riddle that is humanity. Each one before
failed - the prophets failed. Humanity is still on the treadmill. There's a possibility
that I might do it."

"Learn from the
birds and animals - they got better societies and family relations than humans."

"The Bible says a
lot of stuff about Man - that he's filth and abomination - that are not
conducive to my happiness. So I refuse to be Man."

"There's a lot of good people that
are poor, but a lot of good people that are rich.But it's written that it's harder for rich man to enter
the kingdom of heaven than a camel through the eye of a needle.That's discrimination.Why should a rich person be imposed on or kept out of
somewhere?"

"I'm from somewhere
else, definitely. If I was "born", Idefinitely existed somewhere else before birth."

"If life was real - it would protect you. You
goout there and you see all those poor
people - that's life - going hungry for days in a very rich country - that's
life. America getting ready to build
more jails - is that life? - of course it is! And those undertakers, and these
hospitals where people are suffering - is that life? So I'm looking at all
that, and thinking: I'm not part of that.

"I prefer to part of myth. I say: history is his story.
Mystery is my story."

"I can use the so-called Bible to do it - even though it's
unprofitable to humanity - but I can turn around bits of it. 'Turn your other cheek to your enemy' - I don't
recognise any enemies - the whole world is my friend, or should be, cos I'm
doing something that's in their interest.

"Everyone on the planet should do everything they can to help
me."

"The Cross - it's a crossword - the Bible is a giant
puzzleyou have to figure out. Ministers
can't do it.

I can figure it out. I can figure out hieroglyphics - I've
been taught by higher forces.

"But I don't want to be out there leading people, I 'm a
scholar."

"In Chicago, a so-called black man said: 'God made the Universe
in six days, on the seventh he rested. And he aint done a damn thing since'. I was standing there utterly amazed.

"In Penn Station, 3 in the morning, another so-called black man
was saying 'God is with me - he been with me a whole life time. I don't mind telling
you, I don't mind telling the police, I don't mind telling the world . But he
been fucking me up'. I listened - I was utterly amazed.

"What caused that man to say that??"

"I saw a black man on TV and he turned to the camera and said
'God can kiss my black ass'.I looked with utter astonishment."

"Looking at the black people of America, I can say that these
three men were right. God is messing people up. I seen in Bible where it says
that God is delighted when his children defeat him in battle. And where it says
I have given them laws that are evil.

"I go through the Bible with a red pencil

"It's a book where nobody managed to break the code - except
me.

"People say it's the Good Book - how can it be good when
it'sgot people murdering each other,
betraying each other?

"I had to get the equations. The Cosmic Forces say yeah it's
a good book, in that it's accurate, God says he'll do certain things and he
makes good his word, even though what he does is bad.

"In Hebrew ra is evil, butin Ancient Egypt it means sun, it means good. Same word, but different
meaning. And in England and America the word doesn't mean evil cos when you go
to a football match everybody shouts "ra, ra" which is a good cheer.

"So why is it that in Hebrew territory it means evil?
Somebodyswitching values, made good
into evil. And Bible says woeunto he
who makes good into evil and evil into good.

"So the world got to get together and rectify the duplicity
of words, cos that's why we're in this mess.

- black people came
into this country as goods, not men and women. Good is spelt god in some
European countries - they came into America as gods - don't have any second
names, the mark of being a King for the Hebrews. That's why America having
difficulty with black people - because how can youtake a god and make a man out of him?

"They say black is
beautiful. How can they prove it, though?. I have the mathematics toprove it . For in the Benine language in African,the word 'belack' means beautifulin that language.So I can get humanity out of this through
words."

"How am I gonna do it? Set up my blueprint. I've been talking
for a long while about setting up my Omniversity, I could setup my Outer Space Employment Bureau. But I am
just going to

sit back and not get involved. Only thing I got involved in
was Leroy Jones Black Theatre in Harlem."

"I'm here to help".

"In English, to undertake something - it
means foundation - also means to make a contract - but also means to bury. Same wordthat means to raise also means to raze. The duplicity of words!""A cab driver in London said to me 'I'm a musician. maybe I can be in
the band'. I say 'where's your instrument?. 'Left it at home'. 'That's a five hundred dollar fine'. A bit
later, 'I didn't do too well as a musician, maybe I can just be the janitor, sweep up afterwards'. 'Where's your broom?'. 'I don't have one'. 'That's
another five hundred dollar fine'. So he's says 'I've only just joined the band
and I've lost 1000 dollars'

"I like the English sense of humour"

"The seventh sense after sixth (ESP) is humour.

"There are nine senses - I deal with the nine all the time."

"Doubleday rejected my poetry. Said it might as well have been written
in a foreign language."

"I'm the ambassador of the Creator of the Universe"

"But I'm not looking for followers. People want to put up defences, because they are addicted to the
monotony. The status quo."

"People who aren't attuned to the cosmos are like babies -
and when babies come along you have to look after them, they can't survive"